Grad Students Help Local Science Teachers Bring
New Research to Life

By Michael PurdyHomewood

As most of the Baltimore area braced itself for an
anticipated snowstorm on the night of Jan. 16, a group of
about a dozen intrepid listeners gathered in the Maryland
Science Center to hear a presentation about the latest news
on HIV and AIDS given by a Johns Hopkins graduate
student.

The presentation, part of a series of talks known as
Teacher Thursdays, took place in BodyLink, a new exhibit at
the Science Center dedicated to bringing visitors the
latest news and trends in biomedical research. Graduate
students from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland
give the talks at Teacher Thursdays to help science
teachers learn about new research and bring it to life for
their students.

Daphne Monie, a Johns Hopkins graduate student in
immunology, gave last
week's presentation. Monie has been studying on the front
lines of AIDS research in the labs of Robert Siliciano, a
Hopkins professor of
allergy and
infectious diseases.

She had some stark news for the teachers and science
center staff members who'd gathered in the BodyLink
presentations area to hear her talk, which she titled "Is
HIV Still a Threat?"

"There's a growing complacency in the United States
about HIV," Monie said. "Youth in particular are starting
to think that it's not so bad to get HIV anymore."

Monie cited a number of surveys showing that rates of
risky behaviors such as unprotected sex and sex with
multiple partners are increasing. Perhaps even more scary,
though, was a CDC center estimate that 25 percent to 30
percent of people infected with HIV, or about 250,000
people, haven't yet found out that they have HIV.

The new complacency may in part be attributable to the
development of HAART, or Highly Active Anti-Retroviral
Therapy, a practice of treating HIV infection with two or
more classes of antiretroviral drugs that has slowed or
checked the development of AIDS in many patients.

After describing the basic mechanisms through which a
number of different AIDS medications work, new vaccines and
treatments in development, and the ways that HIV can
develop resistance to those treatments, Monie urged
teachers to remind their students that HAART does not cure
AIDS but instead keeps HIV levels in check in the body.

She also suggested that teachers should emphasize to
their students the complexity of the daily drug-taking
regimens involved in HAART and the drugs' potential side
effects, which range from skin rash to headache to diarrhea
to nightmares.

Teacher Thursdays normally include a demonstration
lesson that can be used in the classroom, and Monie's
involved using a bag full of candies to represent the
variety and high number of drugs that HIV-infected patients
have to take every day for the rest of their lives.

Monie also recommended that teachers let their
students know about the anonymous and confidential options
available for getting tested for HIV, and the limitations
of testing. She concluded with an image of the AIDS Quilt
spread out across the Mall in Washington. The quilt,
assembled from thousands of individual quilts put together
by surviving family members of AIDS victims, is dedicated
to memorializing the human cost of AIDS.

"HIV is still a fatal infection," she said. "We need
to educate our youth."

BodyLink is jointly sponsored by the Science Center,
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and the University of
Maryland Medical School. Exhibit director Jennifer Bistrack
encourages Hopkins science and education students to attend
future talks. For a schedule, go to
www.mdsci.org/exhibits/bodylink/index.cfm
and click on Teacher Thursdays.